design:retail - September 2017 - 8

editor's note

008

A Metamorphosis
ALISON EMBREY MEDINA
EDITOR IN CHIEF/ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

alison.medina@emeraldexpo.com
@dretaileditor

AM NOT GOING to sugarcoat it. For retail, it's been a
super weird year.
Closings, bankruptcies
and consolidations have
been the order of the day.
Or have they? We read headline after
headline of the doom and gloom, the
"retail apocalypse," as if some singular event has happened to us that
has defined the fate of all stores. (For
the record, I hate the word "apocalypse" about as much as I detest the
term "omnichannel.")
Let's set something straight. An
apocalypse is "an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome
or catastrophic scale." (Read: disaster, calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe,
debacle, tragedy.) Stop it. Just stop
it. There is no apocalypse. Despite
the recurrence of store closures and
bankruptcies, there is another wave
of value, off-price, luxury and startup retailers that are opening stores at what some
might call an accelerated pace. Retailers are renovating, innovating and trying new things daily. A
new report from bond rating firm Moody's Investor
Service just said that retail is still "fundamentally
healthy" (Retail Dive, August 2017). It's just-you
know-a little weird right now.
A more appropriate term for the current state
of retail, in my humble opinion, is not an apocalypse, but a metamorphosis: "A change of the form
or nature of a thing or person into a completely
different one, by natural or supernatural means."
(Read: transformation, mutation, radical change,
reconstruction, rebirth, sea change.)
Some of us are still caterpillars, slow, steady
and hopelessly full of the expectation of growth
and change. We are lazily sunning ourselves on

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the tree branch, crawling toward the edge of the
leaves, hoping something or someone will figure
out how to make us fly by the time we get to the
end. Many caterpillars have fallen out of the tree.
More will fall.
Some of us have laboriously begun wrapping the
cocoon, hanging on for dear life, brainstorming,
idea sessioning and wondering what beautiful type
of butterfly will emerge on the other side. We are
eager and ready for change, but we're not quite in
control of it.
And some are already flying high, never looking back. They have taken the giant leap and
are full-steam ahead into a lighter, brighter and
much, much faster future. It's all a bit Kafkaesque, isn't it? (Is retail the new Gregor Samsa,
awakening in bed to find we've been transformed

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into a bug without knowing why
or how?) You know what I thought
while I was reading "The Metamorphosis" in high school? This sh*t is
super weird.
What's happening in retail right
now is not an apocalypse; it's one of
science's most golden rules. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest.
Adapt or die. Darwin did not use
the term "fittest" to mean the fastest,
strongest or smartest. "Fittest," in his
view, meant the one "best suited for
the immediate environment."
Blame Amazon. Blame the demanding consumer. Blame venture
capital. Blame private equity. Blame
Donald Trump's tweets. There is no
one single apocalyptic source here.
It's the natural retail evolution that
those who adapt to "the immediate
environment" of today's customer
will, in fact, survive. Even thrive.
What we have found, in the tabulating of votes from this reader-nominated Portfolio
Awards issue, is that retail is undergoing an extreme
metamorphosis. Despite the closings and bankruptcies, the newness and innovation is rising to the top.
Yes, Amazon was voted Retailer of the Year, and
rightly so. If you are not paying attention to what
this e-comm/brick-and-mortar/tech giant is doing, then you are sleeping under retail's biggest
rock. But they are not the only ones innovating.
From Starbucks to adidas, YETI to Kroger, this issue
is full to the brim of brands undergoing a beautiful
awakening. What will the next butterfly be? Will
you be next to find your wings?

Illustration by ZVEREVA IANA/SHUTTERSTOCK

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